4 ms·
I'd like to know how and why red hair, and British accents became synonymous with villainy
by jacknews 8y ago
I'd like to know how and why red hair, and British accents became synonymous with villainy
- zimpenfish 8y ago> British accents became synonymous with villainy [gestures vaguely at British Empire, Irish famine, etc.]
- benj111 8y agoI was thinking the same, but didn't work it in to my reply. Also why Romans have British accents?!?
- jacknews 8y agolol indeed, latin was obviously pronounced similar to modern spanish/italian
- barry-cotter 8y agoHow on Earth is that obvious? There’s no special reason to expect the pronunciation of any particular Romance language to more closely approximate Classical Latin than another, especially when it’s been 400 years since Latin was a language many people spoke fluently and well over a thousand years since Vulgar Latin diverged from the written standard? Why Spanish or Italian and not Portuguese, Romanian, French or Sardinian? This is like expecting Mashreqi Arabic to be closer to the spoken language in Mohammed’s time than Levantine, Egyptian or Maghrebi Arabic. There’s no real reason to privilege one of the Arabic languages above the other as more conservative, a priori. If you’re interested in Latin pronunciation read this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciati...
- jacknews 8y agoMy point was more that it is unlikely to have been pronounced ss upper-class English.
- em500 8y agoBecause in the typical movie setting the Romans were upper-class foreign rulers. That's why they don't have Cockney or Glasgow accents.
- benj111 8y agoThere doesn't seem to be a line of reasoning here. I don't see how: 1)Romans were upper-class foreign rulers 2) ??????? 3) Romans have English accents.
- em500 8y ago2) The British Empire is the closest analog to the Roman Empire in living memory. For hundred of millions of people in the past 3 centuries, British aristocrats were the upper-class rulers, both hated and admired by many of the ruled (including Americans in the colonial era).
- benj111 8y agoI would put more stock in the American Colonial side, rather than living memory side. Western cinema is after all western biased. I'm biased anyway, being British and not upper class.
- rlucas 8y agoEven if a story is set within imperial (or republican) Rome, the whole idea of an ascendant Rome is based on the colonies and provinces. So showing the Roman upper classes (or even the wealthier urban merchants) being "Romans" means implicitly that they are the top crust of a vast empire feeding them wealth and power. That leads to 3) above pretty easily, since in the mind of the hegemonic movie-producing culture (Americans), their archetype of a foreign empire was, of course, the British (English). A more interesting criticism would be hearing how, say, the Spanish language is rendered in Latin American films about Rome or other historical empires. Do they put a Yankee accent in the Spanish language as such a marker? (I suspect it's probably more of a continental Spanish, though.) Would be interesting to know of other non-Anglosphere cultural products that use implicit (e.g. American accents) cues of the new Rome to denote the class status of historical depictions. Global HN'ers?
- usrusr 8y ago> Also why Romans have British accents?!? Most of the Romans depicted are aristocratic. The intersection of present-day aristocracy and native English speakers happens to be British. When the script goes beyond aristocracy into the wide spectrum of Roman classes, British dialects offer a much richer toolkit to signal the differences than any other form of English. On top of that, the upper class British accents predominantly used feel quite old-timey to an American audience, adding to the general flair. Also, if you imagine an percent-day English speaker who is educated in ancient Latin you would likely imagine a high-class Briton as well. This also makes that accent feel more consistent with the setting even though the reasoning does not actually make sense. That being said, when/if the current deluge of Marvel/DC adaptions is finally over, someone will likely make a sandal movie where all the gold-encrusted Romans talk like rappers. Just for kicks.